When Wayne was a Whippersnapper: 'Shranks' of Sonnenberg

By PAUL LOCHER
Staff WriterPublished: August 24, 2012 4:00AM

KIDRON -- With Wayne County having been one of America's greatest hotbeds and melting pots of cabinetmaking during the 19th century, because of the influx of several major ethnic groups, it is difficult to point to any one furniture form that remains almost exclusively identified with a particular group.

However, one such form is the great "shranks" of the Sonnenberg Mennonites.

When the Sonnenberg settlers began emigrating from Switzerland to America in 1819, they brought with them a folk lifestyle that remained virtually unchanged in their secluded valley in Sugar Creek Township until the Civil War, when the process of military conscription invaded the peaceful remote settlement and changed it forever.

Until that time, the Sonnenbergers continued to live almost exactly as they had in their native country, wearing traditional homemade costumes that included wooden shoes, making the same foods they had known in Switzerland, weaving fabrics on looms like they had always used, and making furniture for their homes in the same styles they had been accustomed to for many generations.

One of these furniture forms was the wardrobe, also known as a "kas" or "shrank." While a popular furniture form in Wayne County during the 1800s for storing people's very limited wardrobes, the Sonnenberg cabinets had a very distinctive European flair that was unlike anything else on the local furniture market at the time.

These massive pieces, about four feet in width, were typically crafted of cherry, maple, tulip poplar or black walnut in both one-door and two-door styles. When they were the two-door model, both doors covered a separate case, which was fastened together on the inside by wooden nuts and bolts. These cases invariably had dovetailed construction and were topped by a molding constructed so that it could be lifted off.

If the wardrobe was cherry, black walnut or figured maple, it was typically finished natural. If it was crafted of tulip poplar, it was always given a paint-decorated finish. Doors were typically of the three-panel type (said to represent the Holy Trinity), and the panels could be raised or flat. They were attached to the case with a lift-off pintle-type hinge. The feet were simple: Square tapered blocks attached to a board that could be secured to the bottom of the case with threaded wooden screws.

Inside, the wardrobes invariably had a pegboard on which to hang clothes, drawers that cleverly concealed other secret drawers and shelves both obvious and hidden. The secret drawers and hidden shelves are presumed to have been built because the Sonnenbergers were persecuted for their religion in their native land, and never knew when the king's officials might pay a call to search for religious contraband.